Currently, email clients such as MICROSOFT OUTLOOK and LOTUS NOTES enable a user to exchange electronic messages with other users through networked email servers. These email clients typically display to a user a list of messages that the user has received. If the user wants to view the full message, the user selects the message from the displayed list and the email client renders the selected message on the display device. The user must repeat this process for every separate message that the user wants to view.
Many common email clients also enable a user to sort and group messages by various message attributes, including the subject line. Thus, users can group related messages and replies in the displayed list, but still must view each message individually.
If a user wants to respond to a message, the user simply selects the message from the displayed list, much like viewing the message, and activates a “reply” command. In general, an email client responds to a “reply” command by creating a new message with the same subject line. Many email clients also copy the content of the original message into the reply message. FIG. 1, for example, depicts message text 100 that user 101 has created to send to four recipients 102, with subject line 103. FIGS. 2 and 3 represent typical responses to the message illustrated in FIG. 1. As illustrated in FIGS. 2 and 3, each response contains the same subject line 103. Additionally, each response contains the original message text 100 as well as the response text 200 and 300.
The typical email client's response to a reply command, which generally includes copying the original message content into the reply message, may be useful and convenient for users exchanging a limited number of messages. As the number of electronic messages and replies increases, though, the duplicate content increases the burden on the user to process and manage the information in the messages, and may increase the burden on the underlying data storage system as well. The burden increases proportionally with each additional user that participates in the exchange.
While common email clients relieve some of the burden by allowing the user to group related messages in the displayed list of messages, such functionality does not relieve the user of the burden of opening and reading multiple messages, nor does it relieve the burden on the underlying data storage system.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,453,337 (issued Sep. 17, 2002) (the '337 patent) discloses methods and systems for creating, tracking, and managing the states of electronic media containing static and dynamic content (which the '337 patent refers to as a “zaplet”). The dynamic content is stored in a database accessible over a network through a server. The server accepts input from one or more “participants” in the zaplet to update the dynamic content. Thus, the '337 patent addresses some of the problems associated with group communication through an electronic medium, but the systems and methods disclosed therein rely on a complex authoring and delivery system and require a dedicated server to process the communications and update content. U.S. Pat. No. 6,457,045 (issued Sep. 24, 2002), U.S. Pat. No. 6,496,849 (issued Dec. 17, 2002), and U.S. Pat. No. 6,505,233 (issued Jan. 7, 2003) all generally relate to the same methods and systems disclosed in the '337 patent, and all require a similar complex computing infrastructure to achieve the desired results.
Thus, email client users need an improved means for using existing messaging systems to process, display, and store multiple related electronic messages. The present invention addresses this need.